HP researcher predicts memory-centric processors

SAN JOSE, Calif.  Hewlett-Packard researchers are exploring ways to make their memristor the centerpiece of a future server design. In addition, the company determined low power processors such as those based on ARM cores are superior for some data center workloads.

The work at HP Labs is one aspect of an ongoing debate in the industry over whether today's x86-based processors and servers are optimal for a growing set of Internet-hosted applications. If the HP work comes to fruition it could make the world's largest user of semiconductors become less dependent on Intel Corp., the world's biggest chip maker.

So far, HP's researchers have found different workloads need different kinds of designs, but one overarching concept has become clear. "Re-thinking the balance of computer, storage and communications will happen, and it will have big implications," said Partha Ranganathan, a principal investigator in the exascale data center project at HP Labs.

One part of that re-balancing act is a new kind of chip HP Labs calls a nanostore. A nanostore is essentially a 3-D stack of processor cores married to non-volatile memory cores such as HP's memristors.

The device is designed around the idea that the explosive growth of storage in Internet data centers requires making data the center of any new server design. In an indication that "data is king," Ranganathan notes that Google has reported the data in its systems has grown sixty-fold in seven years.

"We've run some experiments [on the nanostore concept], and found the new approach is a factor of ten better [performance] for the same energy or dollars," said Ranganathan. "This is early work [in 3-D stacks and memristors] so we think we can get factors better [performance]," he said.

Partha Ranganathan explores the design and management of next-generation servers and datacenters as a principal investigator at HP Labs.

It could take five years before nanostore devices are ready for commercial use, Ranganathan said. He plans to publish papers this year on both nanostores and a more near-term idea for a low-power processor board he calls a microblade.